But she found herself gritting her teeth and hoping against hope that Elorin would see and believe. Because she did not want to continue down this path alone.

Elorin gasped suddenly, her hands flying to cover her mouth. “No,” she whispered. “It cannot be.” She peered at Leela over trembling fingers. “The High Priestess?”

“Yes,” Leela replied, her shoulders melting with relief.

“But . . .” Elorin moved as if in a dream to sit on the edge of the bed. “But why?”

Leela sat beside her. “That is what I am trying to discover.”

“How did you come to this conclusion? What proof do you have?”

Leela told Elorin of the conversation she had overheard between the High Priestess and Acolyte Klymthe through the hedge of the Moon Gardens, when it had become clear to Leela that the High Priestess herself had chosen Sera to be sacrificed. “I was as shocked as you are,” Leela said. “I had always trusted in the High Priestess and her wisdom and courage. But she is making decisions that Mother Sun should make. And that is not right. That is not how our City is meant to work.”

Elorin was shaking her head slowly, and for a heart-stopping moment Leela feared that the girl would reject this knowledge—that she would refuse to believe that the leader of their City was anything less than pure, that she would run to the High Priestess and reveal what Leela had told her.

“We trust in her so implicitly,” Elorin said. “But I wondered . . . first when the City did not move after Sera’s sacrifice, and then again when I became a novice. Do you remember when I told you about the secret place in the temple where the High Priestess goes to sequester herself? And that she had been going there more and more recently?”

“Yes,” Leela said. “I remember.”

“I only knew because I overheard two of the oldest novices talking about it and they seemed . . . I would not say suspicious, necessarily, but there was an edge to the discussion that made me curious. And then you began coming to the temple more often, which wasn’t something you ever used to do. It seems like since Sera fell, strange things have been happening in this City.”

Leela could not suppress her smile. “You are very perceptive, Elorin,” she said. “More than I ever realized.”

Elorin shrugged and looked down shyly. “I do not think anyone thinks much of me, or takes me very seriously. It is only because I have trouble opening up to people. It is easier to be devoted to Mother Sun—she listens to me with a welcoming heart and a patient mind.” Her face fell. “At least, I thought she did. Perhaps she has never heard me at all.”